The top prosecutor in Norfolk County is calling on federal regulators to make the overdose-reversing drug naloxone available without a prescription to get it in the hands of more first responders and family and friends of addicts.

District Attorney Michael Morrissey said Tuesday that he wants the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to make naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, available over-the-counter. That would allow more people to get access the drug, which has been used to revive hundreds of overdose victims on the South Shore since 2010.

“Wouldn’t it be easier if we could just get it in the drug store, and we wouldn’t have to worry about all this red tape,” Morrissey said. “It’s one way we may be able to help save someone.”

Naloxone can temporarily reverse the effects of an overdose involving opiates, like heroin, or similar drugs called opioids, like oxycodone.

A handful of police and fire departments in the state – including ones in Quincy, Weymouth, Braintree and Stoughton – carry naloxone. It’s also available to the public through training programs like the ones offered by Manet Community Health in Quincy. Each of those departments and programs has to be backed up by a doctor who writes a standing order to provide them with doses of naloxone.

But Morrissey said naloxone could reach more people and save more lives if the FDA made it available without a prescription. He relayed that message to White House drug czar R. Gil Kerlikowske on Monday at a meeting at a Taunton fire station to discuss the growing problem of heroin and overdoses. Firefighters had to leave in the middle of the meeting to respond to a possible overdose.

Joanne Peterson, founder of the support group Learn to Cope and a naloxone instructor, said she supports Morrissey’s proposal. She said the scope of the opiate problem will likely force federal regulators to act sooner or later.

“My feeling is that it will happen eventually,” she said. “It has to. There’s too many people dying.”

At least 185 people have died of heroin overdoses in Massachusetts during the last four months, State Police said Tuesday.

The statistics released by State Police do not include fatal overdoses in the state’s three largest cities – Boston, Springfield and Worcester – because local police handle their own death investigations in those cities and state police do not track those cases.

The overdoses were largely concentrated in southeastern Massachusetts, western Massachusetts, the Merrimack Valley and Middlesex County.

State Police were unable to provide a comparison for the same time period a year ago because they put a new tracking system in place late last year.

Page 2 of 2 - There were at least 60 fatal opiate overdoses in Norfolk County in 2013, according to the district attorney’s office. There have been 12 so far this year, compared to nine at this time last year.

Quincy police became the first municipal police department to train all its officers to carry naloxone in 2010. Officers have used it to reverse more than 220 overdoses since then. Weymouth fighters began carrying it in March of 2013 and have used it more than 50 times. Braintree firefighters started training last Wednesday and administered it for the first time four hours later.

Morrissey isn’t the first to push for wider access to naloxone. At a public meeting organized by the FDA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies in 2012, citizens, some of whom had lost loved ones to overdoses, requested naloxone be made available over the counter, according to documents on the FDA’s website. Regulators said that would likely require a lengthy review process.

It’s not clear if the agency took additional steps. An agency spokesman could not be reached Tuesday afternoon.

In the meantime, Morrissey said he is working to equip first responders in every city and town in the county with the drug and plans to hold a training for them on March 26.

“We’re going to keep pushing,” he said.

Reach Christian Schiavone at cschiavone@ledger.com or follow him on Twitter @CSchiavo_Ledger.